Global smartphone unit sales rose 20% in the third quarter from Q3 2013, accounting for 66% of total mobile phone shipments, says market tracker Gartner. Of 301 million smartphones sold in Q3, Samsung led with a 24.4% market share, though its shipments fell by 8.5% from Q3 2013, says Gartner. Bolstered by sales of the large-screen iPhone 6, Apple (AAPL) shipments rose 26% in the quarter, giving it a market share of 12.7%. Smartphones based on the
Apple’s (AAPL) December quarter could be constrained by continued shortages of the company’s iPhone 6 handsets, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a report Monday. But Apple likely knew its supply limits when it set fiscal first-quarter targets in late October, so there’s not a lot of downside risk, Munster said. “But (I) do believe the supply constraints could limit meaningful upside” in the December quarter, he said. “Based on our checks of in-store and online availability and industry checks of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, we believe that supply is gradually improving vs. demand, but tight supply should push demand into next quarter and result in Apple (AAPL) giving March revenue guidance slightly (3-5%) higher than Street estimates,” Munster said. Piper Jaffray’s checks in the U.S. suggest that 56% of core models of the new iPhone were available on Friday, up from practically no inventory in mid-November, Munster said….
After it spins off from eBay in 2015, PayPal will face a brace of challenges, three of which go by the names Apple, Alibaba and Google. Apple (AAPL) has entered mobile transactions with Apple Pay, a payment app that piggybacks on existing credit card and bank networks. China e-commerce leader Alibaba Group’s (BABA) affiliated payments business Alipay plans to expand outside China and increasingly threatens PayPal in world markets. Google Wallet,